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Fashion is in its collaboration era. It seems that every week, a brand announces it has partnered with an influencer or a celebrity for a special collection. Perhaps that’s why the news that Everlane’s first-ever designer collaboration would be with the independent label Marques’Almeida was an unexpected (yet welcome) surprise.
“I think it seems like two very odd worlds colliding, but at the time we started talking about doing a collaboration, it was really important for us that it was someone that was in the same mindset in terms of seeing potential in [surplus] fabrics, leftover yarns, and had a really positive approach when we went to the table,” Everlane’s Global Creative Director Mathilde Mader said over a recent Zoom. “Marques’Almeida were kind of right at the top of our list—we did a really big sweep, reading about designers who will do it, but not with as fun or as positive an approach.”
Marques’Almeida’s Marta Marques and Paolo Almeida, for their parts, are no strangers to a collab. Back in 2014, fresh out of Central Saint Martins and a year before they won the LVMH Prize in 2015, the duo created an especially buzzy collaboration with Topshop. The Portuguese designers almost single-handedly defined the denim aesthetic of the 2010s, with asymmetrically cut dresses and tops with extra-frayed details that were mixed with saturated colors and bold silk jacquards. “We hadn’t done a collaboration in ages, and when they mentioned they wanted to do it with deadstock, it kind of sealed the deal,” Marques said from her home in Portugal. “We never thought a bigger company would venture into working with something like that, because it is so much harder. When we do it, we literally collect the rolls of fabric ourselves. We thought, ‘ok if a bigger brand wants to do this, we have to get in it’.”
The collection features Everlane’s Icons—the barrel leg pant, the oxford shirt, their alpaca and cashmere sweaters among others—“reimagined” in Marques’Almeida’s image. The knits are some of the best pieces: an alpaca mesh cardigan and tunic in a shade of tomato red or dusty baby blue, an oversized cashmere crew in Copenhagen blue, and an asymmetric slouchy turtleneck in mint green. That the colors are so especially suited for Marques’Almeida which is known for bold hues, shows how much consideration Mader and her team brought to the project. “We were looking at these yarns with these really bright, amazing colors, and were kind of brainstorming who could take these colors and make them not feel like an odd mix,” Mader recalled. The color palette of the collection is one of her favorite things about the project. “When we were first putting it together, I was concerned it wouldn’t come together because they were almost not complementary, almost clashing. But that clash is actually what ended up being really beautiful.”
For Marques and Almeida, the collaboration allowed them to look at their own signatures with new eyes. “We’ve been interested in codes of dressing underneath the flashier, funkier stuff of the show-looks,” Marques explained. “We discussed things like how long should a hem be, or how much more volume in [our] barrel pants versus their regular ones—we love a big, big jacket with a tiny, tiny skirt.” They discovered the difference between the exaggerated proportions of capital F-fashion and what an exaggerated proportion can mean for more commercial fashion. Almeida explained: “Normally our mini skirts have a dropped waist, so that means they end up looking super short; but this one has a high waist instead. On the satin shirts, we always love the sleeves to be very long; but we needed to be practical so we added a French cuff so that you can fold it up.”
Rounding out the collection are tie-dyed satin viscose slip dresses and tanks, as well as great oversized jackets in patchworked denim or quilted canvas—all pieces that can live fruitful lives in the closets of hardcore fashion fans or closets of people who simply get dressed because they have to leave the house. Everyone wins.
